Sarah Todd: Enjoying courtesies from an age which was more pleasant

It was about the third time we'd slowed and said "grand morning" to somebody or other. It just wouldn't seem right, to me, to be walking, biking or riding and not acknowledge a fellow human being as our paths crossed.

It's a sad sign of the times that such small pleasantries are getting rarer. So many people look at their feet and then, if you say something like "good morning", they just stare at you like you've fallen from another planet.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to stop saying sorry to strangers. If somebody bangs into me, out shopping, for example, it's always me who says "sorry". Then, a few minutes later, I'm mad with myself for apologising for something that wasn't my fault. The resolution lasted for about a week and then the old habit kicked in. Sorry.

One thing that somebody should be made to apologise for is the amount of litter on countryside verges. It's a subject that a real effort is made not to talk about as it can seem so parochial. The word has only graced these pages once before, when a certain red-head of small stature followed and flashed at (with the car lights) a white van which had flung rubbish out of the window. The Husband was mad. Telling me off, he said the culprits might have turned nasty. The grass verges along the mile between our house and the village are carpeted with everything from lager cans to crisp packets.

We've never seen anybody walking past swigging from a can, so the only presumption to make is that oiks are throwing them out of their windows as they whizz by.

However, it's not just daft lads who are litter louts. Oh no, there's a new breed that has a much more respectable faade. Is it just me who's noticed the number of plastic bags used to collect dog muck neatly tied and hanging from hedges, trees and even gates? The guilty parties pick up the mess, then – once they get a curtain twitch away from civilisation – offload the pongy parcels as quickly as possible.

Talking of dogs, there's been a bit of feedback since last week's nostalgic rant about the old Blue Peter appeals for silver foil and so on.

A friend who takes the charity's animals in for the first stages of their training, tells us that Hearing Dogs for the Deaf still collects used postage stamps. So there's now a real fight in our house over the post as the Husband – yes, you've guessed – sifts through to see if there are any stamps without the postmark before his offspring get to them.

For further information, visit www.hearingdogs.org.uk or call 01844 348100